Students and teachers return to school

Dan Brown/Independent
The new freshman class is all smiles on their first day at BHS.

Photos

Photo

Dan Brown/Independent
Vance Bailey, Dillon Salisbury Brad Browder and Joe Glauser start the first day of their senior years at Berkeley.

Photo

Dan Brown/Independent
Berkeley High School Assistant Principal Charlie Harrison makes sure student parking passes are in order on the first day of school.

Photo

Dan Brown/Independent
At 8:00 a.m. on Main Street, traffic stretched beyond Broughton Street as parents lined up to drop off students for their first day of school.

While the calender says fall won’t arrive until Sept. 21, summer officially ended locally on Aug. 19 as the doors of Berkeley County schools opened wide to welcome students back into the fold for the 2014-2015 school year.

The day, so far, has gone smoothly, a “happy chaos” according to one school official.

At Timberland, Principal Kerry Daugherty also welcomed 14 new teachers to his staff.

Daugherty expressed excitement about the possibilities and opportunities this coming school year offered in meeting the needs of their students.

“I expressed this excitement to our staff in an email this morning about how much I’m looking forward to the coming school year and working with them to meet the expectations of our students.”

Daugherty also commended the students in getting to school and to class on time.

“The students did an outstanding job, he said. “Everybody arrived on time and was in a class room at the bell. We are still registering new students to get them in as soon as we can.”

At Berkeley High School, Principal Steven Steele was extremely impressed with the Stags’ first day.

“We have started off great,” he said. “People must have found out about our test scores because we have the largest enrollment at Berkeley that we’ve had in many years.”

In 2013, BHS touted an 83-percent graduation rate and was the only high school in the district to improve on all their major test scores.

In addition to the surge in athletic participation, academics and fine arts are also on the rise.

“Our Blue Brigade band is back,” Steele said. “We have the best participation numbers with our band this year than we’ve had in a very long time.”

Steele commended the staff’s collective effort in getting everybody where they needed to be in a timely manner.

“Everybody did a great job and I’m especially proud of the way the guidance counselors handled everybody and got everybody where they needed to be. We are still registering new students even as we speak.”

At St. John’s Christian Academy, the Cavaliers get a leg up on the school year and avoided the dreaded first day of school traffic snarl on Main Street/Hwy. 6 by starting school last week on Thursday, Aug. 14.

Staff at SJCA said the first day of school went smoothly and it was a nice change of pace this year not having to deal with construction issues.

Construction of the school’s new welcome center wrapped up in early 2014.

At Cross High School, school officials said while the first day of school was hectic, students found their way to the right classes and arrived on time.

Comments

Notice about comments:

The Berkeley Independent is pleased to offer readers the enhanced ability to comment on stories. We expect our readers to engage in lively, yet civil discourse. We do not edit user submitted statements and we cannot promise that readers will not occasionally find offensive or inaccurate comments posted in the comments area. Responsibility for the statements posted lies with the person submitting the comment, not The Berkeley Independent.

If you find a comment that is objectionable, please click "report abuse" and we will review it for possible removal. Please be reminded, however, that in accordance with our Terms of Use and federal law, we are under no obligation to remove any third party comments posted on our website. Read our full terms and conditions.